Turkey booming in Michigan

Turkey production could double in Michigan over the next two years, says a leader in the industry.

By comparison, Ontario’s turkey industry has been stagnant for more than a decade.

The Canadian Turkey Marketing Agency and the Turkey Farmers of Ontario marketing board have been searching long and hard for ways to stimulate demand, especially outside of whole birds for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter family feasts.

Val Vail-Shirey, executive director of the Michigan Allied Poultry Industries (MAPI), said on a local report on Michigan radio station WJR that increased broiler demand also has the potential to fuel more production and new processing capacity in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.

Michigan poultry producers are already trying to meet such current challenges as labor uncertainty and reliable access to energy, Vail-Shirey said.

MAPI represents turkey, chicken and egg farmers who raise five million turkeys and 3.8 million broiler chickens and own 10.5 million egg-laying hens.

Ontario could obviously be doing as well as Michigan because the climate, the housing, the feed, the breeding stock and management practices are all quite similar.

The difference seems obvious - a complacent farming and processing industry that simply charges whatever sky-high tariff protection will allow.

And do you think the resulting high prices just might have something to do with stagnant consumer demand?

                          

Thailand takes Canadian pork market

Thailand is poised to take over part of the Russian pork market that was filled with Canadian pork – until Russia banned meat imports from countries that imposed economic sanctions over the situation in the Ukraine.

Russia has signed an agreement to accept pork from two processing plants in Thailand.

Officials in Thailand say they believe they will be able to export about 50,000 tonnes of pork to Russia.

Russia was Canada’s second-largest customer for pork at the time the trading bans were announced.

Canada was among the countries that imposed economic sanctions on Russia.

The chances of getting the Harper government to compensate Canadian hog farmers and Canadian pork packers for the loss of the Russian market vary between zilch and nil.

CWB rejects FNA overture

The Canadian Wheat Board has rejected purchase plans by Farmers of North America.

The farmer-owned co-operative had earlier asked the federal government for six to eight weeks more time to gather its forces to make a bid.

But in a telephone call to Farmers of North America, based in Saskatoon, the management of the Canadian Wheat Board, based in Winnipeg, said the farmers are out of the running.

Several global grain-trading companies, such as Louis Dreyfus, are said to be close to making bids for the board.

It is owned by the federal government and used to have a monopoly on exporting Prairie-grown wheat and barley.

The Harper government stripped that monopoly power and announced its intention to privatize the board.

Since then the Canadian Wheat Board has purchased some grain elevators and announced plans to build more.

Farmers of North America asked farmers to make an “expression of interest” in buying the board by pledging investments in $1,000-tranches.

Bob Friesen, president of FNA, said about $50 million has been gathered so far. He said FNA will continue with its plan, called AgraCity, to invest in grain handling and marketing and in fertilizer production and marketing.

It has another venture underway to build a major nitrogen-producing facility.

Cedarvale regains egg-grading licence

Cedarvale Farms near Guelph has regained its egg-grading licence.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency suspended its licence earlier this year because too many eggs failed to meet minimum weight standards for the grade that was indicated.

Yet the same CFIA allows the two largest egg-grading businesses in Canada to market cracked eggs in Grade A cartons. 

That's based on documented evidence contained in CFIA's own random-sample checking of egg grading.

Cracked eggs are a risk to health because harmful bacteria could enter via cracks and people eating raw eggs could be poisoned.

British report slams EU GMO bans

Europe is being too cautious in its regulation of genetically-modified crop varieties, says a new report from scientists based in the United Kingdom.

The report from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council says many of the regulations should be cancelled to enable scientists to bring improved varieties to market.

The council allocates government funding for biotech research.

It underlined the value of "genome editing" technology that allows precise and targeted genetic changes without having to switch DNA between species.

Such advances blurred the line between genetic modification (GM) and non-GM breeding techniques, it says.

This made fair assessments of GM applications difficult under the existing regulatory framework, which focused on the methods used to produce a new crop variety rather than a plant's actual characteristics.

The EU approach to GM was in contrast to the process for approving new medicines, which weighed up benefit and risk by looking at the active molecules in a drug, not the way they were produced.

The statement, from a panel of experts appointed by the council says " novel genetic techniques have been developed in recent years and are advancing rapidly. They include techniques commonly referred to as 'genome editing' that allow targeted changes to be made to genomes, such as adding, removing or replacing DNA at specified locations.

"The new techniques offer the possibility of making genetic changes more precisely than previously possible by targeting them to specific sites in the genome.

"In some cases it will be impossible to tell what method was used to produce a new crop variety, because exactly the same DNA changes could be introduced using a variety of conventional breeding or newer techniques.

The boundaries between established genetic modification (GM) and non-GM breeding are blurred, it says.

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"This raises questions about how new crop varieties should be regulated. A regulatory system based on the characteristics of a novel crop, by whatever method it has been produced, would provide more effective and robust regulation than current EU processes, which consider new crop varieties differently depending on the method used to generate them," the report says.

BBSRC chief executive Professor Jackie Hunter said “if we want the UK and the EU to continue to be world-leading in this area, we must ensure there is appropriate regulation in this changing landscape."

                           

Russia’s catching pork smugglers

Since Russia banned pork from Europe in January, customs officials have found smugglers labeling pork as mushrooms, frozen fruit juice and bubblegum.

Bubblegum? That blows my mind.

Smuggled pork has come from The Netherlands, but some has also come from Germany, Brazil, Poland and Belgium.

Rosselkhoznadzor reported 360 tons of illegal pork from Europe has been identified recently.

“They are party to the EU Customs Union, and so the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is directly responsible for the contents of the containers. As we can see, the EFSA has no control, and even facilitates, smuggling,” the head of Rosselkhoznadzor, Sergey Dankvert, told the TASS news agency.

"The Netherlands, for example, declared the goods as frozen mushrooms, jams, and marmalade," Dankvert is quoted as saying.

This is the second instance of pork smuggling that Rosselkhoznadzor has discovered in the last month.

On October 13, the agency found that more than 60 tons of German and Dutch pork entered Russia labeled as mushrooms from China.

Rosselkhoznadzor began investigating the questionable cargo arriving at the Belarus border along with the Federal Customs Service (FTS) last month.

Cargill worker fined

A Cargill employee has been fined $7,500 by an Alberta court dealing with the issue of water-sample tampering.

The company was fined $40,000 earlier this year for the same offences in February and March, 2012.

Pushp Pal Singh tampered with three samples of wastewater from the High River beef-packing plant before they were sent to an independent lab for analysis for compliance with Alberta government standards.